The Brightcove LUG is BACK for a new season of meetups to stimulate, educate and tantalise you and your teams with all things Brightcove and Online Video.

Coming back in style we have:

Getting Live Streaming done right will give a massive boost to your online video initiative.   
 
Learning how to do it right from the experts can save you at lot of time and headaches as you try to navigate this new form's many pitfalls.

By its very definition a niche means a distinct segment of a market. And it's a great place to be in business. It should mean that competition is low and that your consumers are very loyal. The trade off is that your available market segment can be relatively small and hard to reach. So then how do you look to grow and scale whilst trying to protect the advantage that your niche gives you?

Sometimes we're all guilty of pontificating the value of all this wonderful stuff we call online video.   At the end of the day it's just easier to spread the word than to prove it.    One of the main challenges for proving an idea is that you need hard data to back up your claims.   And that, folks, is like gold dust these days.   Data, real meaningful data, can mean all the difference to a competitive edge of a company.  So yo

The Great Debate ended in a draw.   The very entertaining session between 2 industry heavyweights ended in a bit of a love-in where they ended up educating the crowd more about how the sport will evovle then tearing into each other.  

A few days ago I was sitting in a meeting between a Brightcove strategic broadcaster account and an Apple HTML5 expert to discuss bringing their content to the iPad via the mobile web (read: HTML5 Video).   During this chat no stone was left unturned when trying to get content onto the iDevice platform.   At the end of the meeting I came away with an image of the difficulty for HTML5 video's acceptance is akin to an early Southpark episode where C

Today from the ring at the IAB UK we're streaming LIVE the Great Debate: Buyer vs Seller.   Thanks to Live Talkback you can be part of the action.   Answer the questions below retime to help frame the current mindset.   Then throughout the debate change your answers and help figure out if you were swayed by the debaters!

So I just had word from our friends at the IAB UK that tomorrow's event is almost sold out!   That's a capacity of 90 people coming to get ring side seats for the showdown between the Media Buyer and Media Seller.

Tomorrow we'll be live streaming the event from this blog so come back at 3pm BST (British Summer Time) for kick off.   We're also going to be deploying some cool interactivity tools from our friends at Live TalkBack that let the audience be part of the fun!

In the red corner, weighing in at 98.2KG, 56 wins, 5 loses and 37 knockouts, wearing the Buyer shorts:
Oliver "Float like a Butterfly, Sting like a Bee" Newton!

In the blue corner, weighing in at 100.2KG, 32 wins, 4 loses and 27 knockours, wearing the Sellers shorts:
Tim "Smokin' Joe" Hussain!

In the last of our series on PPV, Nigel Regan, CEO of Randicoot, has an animated and colour look at one of the key challenges facing Pay Per View strategies: that of earning and honouring a consumer's trust.   You can find out more about Randicoot here: http://www.brightcove.com/en/partners/randicoot

Reward, reward, reward!

In the second post of our 3 part series, MPP Global's Scott O'Neill takes a look at the landscape from an established providers perspective.   Especially looking at how a major broadcaster and Brightcove customer is currently leveraging PPV technology in their monetisation strategy.  You can find out more about MPP Global here: http://www.brightcove.com/en/partners/mpp-global-solutions

As the first contributor to this series on PPV, Invideous has the honour of being the first partner to finished their integration with Brightcove.  Also as a funded startup they offer a unique and grass roots look on this emerging and lucrative market.   Jack Thorogood, CEO, gives his thoughts on how adoption of this new model doesn't need to be hard, complicated or risky to your current revenue streams.

Brightcove publishers have long looked, rather successfully, to make a profitable business with online video.   The most typical model, and until recently the only really practical one, is the ad supported model where content is supplied free to access to anyone while adverts  are inserted either in a linear break model or in a nonlinear format like overlays.  In this model the user pays with nothing but their time and attention (and in about 2% of them a click) while the brands pay the publishers for the placement.

Great times here in Brightcove UK - we've moved offices!  

The UK's Channel 4 (a Brightcove powered publisher) did an amazing, BAFTA nominated, documentary called Tsunami: Caught on Camera - a provocative and powerful edit of personal video clips compiled around the devastating 2004 Boxing Day tragedy.

Today we're kicking of our Summer Video event with the IAB UK.   A series of 3 events over the summer months to look at issues that will fundamentally change the way online video advertising will effect your business.

Today we're starting with a dissection and dissemination of the VAST/VPAID standards.   At 3pm BST (GMT+1) we'll be kicking off a session looking into how these new standards will effectively change your business for the better.

Long time Brightcove customer, The Guardian, re-launched their homepage today - looks pretty slick.   In an interview given to Business Insider, Janine Gibson reasons it's "all about using it as a better window for the vast variety of what we're producing around our network."

Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive of the world's largest, best known, search engine Google, has a new rule: Mobile First.  Borrowing heavily from his position I'm all about extending that to be more accurate: Mobile Video First.

Tonight is London's BDG - Brightcove for Interactive Video.

Come back at 7pm GMT for the live stream (player below) - ask questions via Twitter!  #LBDG

Using video in an eCommerce solution can increase your conversion rates by a whopping 40%.   To do this you need to follow some simple guidelines.  Mark Harpur, our Regional Sales Engineering Director, has been on the front lines gathering the following thoughts to help you succeed.

Mark writes:

At our recent UK Monetisation Summit I caught up with Patrick Napier, owner of Brightcove powered music site Rock Sound.   Patrick and his team have had to work through the same challenges facing all print publishers: how to transition into an online digital media company.   He outlines below how SEO and Social Media has helped him achieve success; and how there's plenty more to do.

Patrick writes:

Did you miss our uber successful UK Monetisation Advertising Summit a couple of weeks back?  Don't fret, the power of the Online Video Platform comes to the rescue again with the sessions now available on demand - right here for you:

This evening will be the latest in the London BDG series: Brightcove for Mobile.  For a full highlights fo the evening head over here to get the details

http://www.meetup.com/London-Brightcove-Developer-Group/calendar/12457896/

But in our interest to mindshare and help the community we'll be live streaming the event - starting at around 6.30pm GMT we'll go to about 8.30pm with 3 or 4 speakers.

Yesterday I was at the really enjoyable Online Video Monetisation Summit hosted by Brightcove UK.  I felt the speakers really brought entertaining thought leadership, examples and expertise to the podium.   The packed room was thoroughly engaged for the entire event and some really great questions were asked.

The takeaways for me from the event are generally thematic but incredibly insightful:

It seems like the industry has gone crazy for the number 3.   When titling this post I went through all sorts of revisions: 3's company, 3's a crowd, 3 men and an OVP.  Once settled on the above I started to write the actual content.  For me everywhere I look the number 3 is popping up at the moment, I'm turning 33 in the 3rd month of this year for example.   More relevant to this blog roll is that in the OVP universe there are 3 things you need to think about in the coming 3 months all involving the number 3:

The month of January was Live Streaming month for me.   Coming out of 2009 everyone was asking the same questions around Live Streaming: What is it?  What do I need to make it happen?  Why do I need it?

The subject was so popular in fact that I sat in on half a dozen global customer calls around it, organised the LBDG to delve deep into it and wrote an internal memo about it.  Over the last 4 weeks we also had the privilege of streaming over Brightcove:

So we're up and Live for the next 2.5 hrs

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid46572716001?bctid=46866543001

Remember to try to use the Facebook button on the player!

Send me a tweet if you want to ask a question :  http://www.twitter.com/cameronchurch

Quick note - sound won't start until the speakers do at 7pm

It's going to be a very exciting year for us at the LBDG as we start a monthly series of events designed for you to get the most of Brightcove and the emerging Online Video industry.

To kick things off, as you probably all know, we're starting with Brightcove for Live Streaming!

We've got an exciting line of presenters for you:

One of the most important things that a project design teams needs to think about when building a successful online video initiative is the concept of Consumer Discovery.   Amazingly enough, in my experience, this tends to be one of the most overlooked component of any project.

A new year, a new decade and new energy!   As ritual as ever with the new year come the predictions and just for fun I thought this year I might give my own thoughts around what to expect.

With this AND taking up Twitter (@cameronchurch) I'm really pushing the boat out here!  Here we go: